Week in Apple: MacBook Air review, iCloud beta, and patent wars

This week's top Apple news at Ars included our review of the mid-2011 MacBook …

So much can happen in just a week. This week's top Apple news at Ars included our review of the mid-2011 MacBook Air, news about the Apple TV and the iCloud beta, and rumors about iTunes Replay. That's in addition to iOS developers banding together to fight Lodsys, Apple fighting Samsung in Australia, and more. Read on if you need to catch up:

iOS devs put out a call to unite against Lodsys, other patent trolls: Independent and big-name developers alike are being bullied by patent trolls like Lodsys, despite Apple's insistence that it has developers covered. Now, iOS superstar developer Mike Lee has put out a call for developers to band together and defend themselves against patent bullying, with the goal of becoming "the ants of East Texas."

Second-gen Apple TV gains iTunes purchasing ability, Vimeo app: The second-generation Apple TV can only do rentals from iTunes—or can it? Apple released a software update for the device that lets users access their past iTunes purchases from the Apple TV and even make new ones, bringing back some functionality from the first-gen version. Oh, and there's a new Vimeo app for the Apple TV, too.

iTunes Replay rumor redux: now with TV, movie re-downloads: Apple just gave the Apple TV the ability to stream past iTunes TV purchases directly from Apple, but that could just be the beginning of a new service called iTunes Replay. The rumor has been resurrected after a couple years of lying dormant, and Apple is expected to announce it soon.

1 Reader Comments

I think the issue is whether Apple's license with Lodsys covers iOS developers selling apps on the Apple appstore. Since the in store purchase is a mechanism within the Apple appstore, it really is a debatable situation.